equivocal. Whenever Mr. Southey shews the sincerity of his former professions of zeal in behalf of Spanish liberty, by writing an elegy on the death of Porlier, or a review of the conduct of Ferdinand VII. (he is a subject worthy of Mr. Southey's prose style), or by making the lame tailor of Madrid (we forget his name) the subject of an epic poem, we will retract all that we have said in disparagement of his consistency-But not till then.

We meant to have quoted several other passages, such as that in which old Praxis, that is, Experience, recommends it to the Princess to maintain the laws by keeping all that is old, and adding all that is new to them-that in which he regrets the piety and learning of former times, and then promises us a release from barbarism and brutishness by the modern invention of Sunday schools-that in which he speaks of his own virtues and the wisdom of his friends—that in which he undertakes to write a martyrology.—But we are very tired of the subject, and the verses are not worth quoting. There is a passage in Racine which is; and with that, we take our leave of the Laureate, to whom it may convey some useful hints in explanation of his ardent desire for the gibbeting of Bonaparte and the burning of Paris :—

Nabal.-Que peut vous inspirer une haine si forte?
Est-ce que de Baal le zèle vous transporte?
Pour moi, vous le savez, descendu d'Ismaël,
Je ne sers ni Baal ni le Dieu d'Israel.

Mathan.-Ami, peux-tu penser que d'un zèle frivole
Je me laisse aveugler pour une vaine idole !
Né ministre du Dieu qu'en ce temple on adore,
Peut-être que Mathau le serviroit encore,
Si l'amour des grandeurs, la soif de commander,
Avec son joug étroit pouvoient s'accommoder.
Qu'est-il besoin, Nabal, qu'à tes yeux je rappelle
De Joad et de moi la fameuse querelle ?
Vaincu par lui j'entrai dans une autre carrière,
Et mon âme à la cour s'attacha tout entière.
J'approchai par degrés l'oreille des rois ;
Et bientôt en oracle on erigea ma voix.
J'étudiai leur cœur, je flattai leurs caprices,
Je leur semai de fleurs le bord des précipices:

Déserteur de leur loi, j'approvai l'entreprise,
Et par là de Baal méritai la prêtrise;

Par là je me rendis terrible à mon rival,
Je ceignis la tiare, et marchai son égal.
Toutefois, je l'avoue, en ce comble de gloire,
De Dieu que j'ai quitté l'importune mémoire
Jette encore en mon ame un reste de terreur ;
Et c'est ce qui redouble et nourrit ma fureur.
Heureux, si sur son temple achevant ma vengeance,
Je puis convaincre enfiu sa haine d'impuissance,
Et parmi les débris, les ravages, et les morts,
A force d'attentats perdre tous mes remords.t

TO THE EDITOR OF THE EXAMINER.

SIR, I hope you will not omit to notice two passages in Mr. Southey's poem, in which, to try his talent at natural de

* "Carnage is her daughter."-Mr. Wordsworth's Thanksgiving Ode.

+ This article falls somewhat short of its original destination, by our having been forced to omit two topics, the praise of Bonaparte, and the abuse of poetry. The former we leave to history: the latter we have been induced to omit from our regard to two poets of our acquaintance. We must say they have spoiled sport. One of them has tropical blood in his veins, which gives a gay, cordial, vinous spirit to his whole character. The other is a mad wag,— who ought to have lived at the Court of Horwendillus, with Yorick and Hamlet,-equally desperate in his mirth and his gravity, who would laugh at a funeral and weep at a wedding, who talks nonsense to prevent the head-ache, who would wag his finger at a skeleton, whose jests scald like tears, who makes a joke of a great man, and a hero of a cat's paw. The last is more than Mr. Garrard or Mr. Turnerelli can do. The busts which these gentlemen have made of a celebrated General are very bad. His head is worth nothing unless it is put on his men's shoulders.

scription, he gives an account of two of "the fearfullest wildfowl living -a British Lion and a Saxon one. Both are striking likenesses, and would do to hang on the outside of Exeter-'Change to invite the curious. The former (presumed not to be indigenous) is described to be in excellent case, well-fed, getting in years and corpulent, with a high collar buried in the fat of the neck, false mane, large haunches (for which this breed is remarkable), paws like a shin of beef, large rolling eyes, a lazy, lounging animal, sleeping all day and roaring all night, a great devourer of carcases and breaker of bones, pleased after a full meal, and his keepers not then afraid of him. Inclined to be uxorious. Visited by all persons of distinction, from the highest characters abroad down to the lowest at home. The other portrait of the Saxon Lion is a contrast to this. It is a poor lean starved beast, lord neither of men nor lands, galled with its chain, which it has broken, but has not got off from its neck. This portrait is, we understand, to be dedicated to Lord Castlereagh.-Your constant reader, NE QUID NIMIS.

"A NEW VIEW OF SOCIETY; or, Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, and the Application of the Principle to Practice." Murray, 1816.-" AN ADDRESS TO THE INHABITANTS OF NEW LANARK, on opening an Institution for the Formation of Character." By Robert Owen, one of his Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the County of Lanark.”—Hatchard, 1816.

["Dedicated to those who have no Private Ends to accomplish, who are honestly in search of Truth, for the purpose of ameliorating the Condition of Society, and who have the firmness to follow the Truth wherever it may lead. without being turned aside from the Pursuit by the Prepossessions or Preju dices of any part of Mankind;-to Mr. Wilberforce, the Prince Regent," &c.]

August 4, 1816.

"A NEW View of Society"-No, Mr. Owen, that we deny. It may be true, but it is not new. It is not coeval, whatever the

H

author and proprietor may think, with the New Lanark mills,. but it is as old as the royal borough of Lanark, or as the county of Lanark itself. It is as old as the "Political Justice" of Mr. Godwin, as the "Oceana" of Harrington, as the "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More, as the "Republic" of Plato; it is as old as society itself, and as the attempts to reform it by shewing what it ought to be, or by teaching that the good of the whole is the good of the individual-an opinion by which fools and honest men have been sometimes deceived, but which has never yet taken in the knaves and knowing ones. The doctrine of Universal Benevolence, the belief in the Omnipotence of Truth, and in the Perfectibility of Human Nature, are not new, but "Old, old," Master Robert Owen;-why then do you say that they are new ? They are not only old, they are superannuated, they are dead and buried, they are reduced to mummy, they are put into the catacombs at Paris, they are sealed up in patent coffins, they have been dug up again and anatomised, they have been drawn, quar-, tered and gibbetted, they have become black, dry, parched in the sun, loose, and rotten, and are dispersed to all the winds of Heaven! The chain in which they hung up the murdered corse of human Liberty is all that remains of it, and my Lord Shallow keeps the key of it! If Mr. Owen will get it out of his hands, with the aid of Mr. Wilberforce and the recommendation of The Courier, we will" applaud him to the very echo, which shall applaud again." Till then, we must content ourselves with chaunting remnants of old lauds" in the manner of Ophelia :

66 No, no, he is gone, and we cast away moan,

And will he not come again,

And will he not come again?"

"like a cloud over the

Perhaps, one of these days, he may Caspian:" then if ever, and never till then, human nature, will hold up its head again, and the Holy and Triple Alliance will be dissolved. But as to this bald spectre of Liberty and Necessity conjured up by Mr. Owen from the falls of the Clyde, with a

primer in one hand, and a spinning-jenny in the other, coming down from the Highlands in a Scotch mist, and discoverable only by second-sight, we may fairly say to it

Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;

Thou hast no speculation in those eyes,

Which thou dost glare with."

Why does Mr. Owen put the word "New," in black-letter at the head of the advertisements of his plan of reform? In what does the New Lanark differ from the old Utopia? Is Scotland, after all, the true Lubber-land? Or must the whole world be converted into a cotton-factory? Does not Mr. Owen know that the same scheme, the same principles, the same philosophy of motives and actions, of causes and consequences, of knowledge and virtue, of virtue and happiness, were rife in the year 1793, were noised abroad then, were spoken on the house-tops, were whispered in secret, were published in quarto and duodecimo, in political treatises, in plays, poems, songs, and romances-made their way to the bar, crept into the church, ascended the rostrum, thinned the classes of the universities, and robbed "Durham's golden stalls❞ of their hoped-for ornaments, by sending our aspiring youth up to town to learn philosophy of the new teachers of philosophy; that these "New Views of Society" got into the hearts of poets and the brains of metaphysicians, took possession of the fancies of boys and women, and turned the heads of almost the whole kingdom: but that there was one head which they never got possession of, that turned the heads of the whole kingdom round again, stopped the progress of philosophy and necessity by wondrous fortitude, and that "thus repelled, philosophy fell into a sadness, then into a fast, thence to a watching, then into a weakness, thence to a lightness, and by this declension, to the lamentable state wherein it now lies,"-hooted by the boys, laughed at by the women, spit at by fools, trod upon by knaves, damned by poet-laureates, whined over by maudlin metaphysicians, rhymed upon by mincing ballad-makers, ridiculed in ro